


Manna's Secret

by FosterTheBananas



Category: Harvest Moon, Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town, Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town (Video Game 2020), 牧場物語つながる新天地 | Story of Seasons
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:20:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26087098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FosterTheBananas/pseuds/FosterTheBananas
Summary: Manna thinks a lot about empty spaces. She's been an expert at filling them all her life.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 24





	Manna's Secret

Most of the time, Manna doesn’t know what she is saying. The words are there to fill in the empty spaces of silence; as natural as the river’s babbling and the bird’s song slot into the empty space of the forest, so too do Manna’s words have their place in Mineral Town.

Are they like bricks in a foundation, layered upon one another, holding up the house as they fill in the empty spaces left between their brothers? Or coins rubbing together, clinking in and out of the cash register, filling empty pockets? Are they like rays of sun peeking in through the empty space of blinds?

Manna thinks a lot about empty spaces. She’s been an expert at filling them all her life.

When she was sixteen, she lived on her own and had to fill the empty space of her apartment. She had not left her home behind but found that home had left her. It was her first empty space, and she thought if she could hold someone tight enough, squeeze them hard enough, then they could help make her whole. She found Duke.

He was eighteen and hard jaw, hard muscle, brash laugh. He was loud and together they made enough noise, he held her tight enough, that she thought he was the answer. She thought holes could be filled with love, like pegs in a wooden board.

They moved to a small town so he could pursue his dream. It was quiet and peaceful. The town was bathed by long stretches of silence, and Manna drowned. She drowned at the dinner table, suffocating in their silence. She coughed out words like water from her lungs. Duke worked tirelessly and drank. And drank. And drowned in ways of his own.

His laugh was still brash, but had soured under the hot sun like a grape plucked too soon. Manna talked for them both but never enough to fill all the space that had grown between them.

She was eighteen when she had Adge. Adge was soft and warm and all she could have ever wanted. Manna held her close to her heart, felt the warmth seep through, and yet Manna cried with Adge every night. She could not stop. She held and she loved and she tried so hard but the emptiness inside her grew until she was sure she would fall in on herself. Sasha and Joanna were lifesavers that year. They took turns spending the nights with her, held her close, and whispered soft murmurs in her ear. They wiped tears from her eyes, and swept the sweaty bangs from her forehead. Slowly, they helped her push off the silent twilight that had blanketed itself around her. 

One day Manna looked around, and it was like being awake again after a long sleep. She could breathe again, and the words filled back in around her. She pushed down her empty spaces and loved her daughter fiercely. But perhaps she clung too tightly. When Adge shut the final door on Manna and Duke, the floor fell out from beneath her. She fell and fell through that empty space. She smoothed the covers of the empty bed. Moved the empty chair from the dining table. Duke grew sullen and quieter. Manna filled what she could.

Another door was shut soon after. It was quieter, shut gently like a runaway in the night. Joanna, who had held her and saved her, and all for what? Not to leave behind an empty space in Mugi’s house, but to leave behind a child with Duke’s eyes.

She passes the years and learns to step around the holes in her life. She goes to the town square and her words float out around her. She makes new friends. She watches the people in town, knows them, and really sees them. And then one day she sees a young man, and she knows he is drowning. He stands in his own silence and he drowns but he does not fight it with words. She sees him and she knows. He wants to drown. He wants to hurt. 

She puts words in the right ears, and soon he is eating meals at the inn. Soon, he is offering a few words to Carter like offerings for collection. Soon, he is picking grapes off the vine, and he does not wilt or turn sour. Together they sit at the dinner table, and he tentatively strings together sentences, and they are like pearls on a string. Together they sit in the church, in the quiet, and Manna doesn’t feel like she is drowning.

Manna will never fill the empty spaces inside her, but she has her place in Mineral Town, and she fills them for others.


End file.
